The voice of Roberta Tubbs can also add an additional trait to her repertoire: a savvy crowd-funding marketer.

Back in 2013, Gomez used top crowd-funding site indiegogo to fund her independent sci-fi web series, called “Surviving the Dead.” It was successful. With a strong social media following via Twitter, you’d think the process would be easy for folks to latch on and give give give.

To the contrary, it takes much work. “It’s always hard because even though people know me from The Parent Hood or another film or The Cleveland Show or Steven Universe or whatever I’m still not Jada Pinkett I’m not Will Smith,” Reagan Gomez told me on Scoop B Radio.

“Even when I look at Spike Lee and how he raised over a million dollars and whatever it was I wouldn’t even feel confident giving on Indie Go-Go, Kick Start , or whatever trying to raise money even for our budgets for the web series it’s not easy and I remember when we did Indie Go-Go the first time it was in 2012 or 2013 and this was before anyone had a Go Fund Me.”

“Crowd funding was still very new so for me to get out there and put videos like: ‘hey I know you seen me on whatever TV show but can you loan me $5?’ It was like very like what the f**k is this? Everybody thought it was a scam and I really had to explain like: ‘no it’s not a scam. I’m not a millionaire and I really want to start creating original content and be able to tell our story.’ And once people started knowing what it was I wanted to do and hearing about the project and hearing about the cast I wanted to have, then we had a successful Indie Go-Go campaign.”

According to Gomez, the project has had ups and downs, but she’s become consistent:

“Our first season I think our goal was $25k and we raised just under $14k,” she said. “We didn’t reach our goal, but raised a nice chunk of change. I mean for the second season we only raised five grand so it’s up and down each crowd funding campaign that you do is totally different. Just because you were successful in the last one doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful in your next one. So we raised a nice chunk of change for Surviving as well but for Surviving I had to take a huge chunk out of our savings in order to make the show be what I wanted it to be, because I knew because of the genre and the type of show I wanted it to be the production value had to be there. It had to look like a show you would see on TV. I had the cast, I had the story, but I just wanted to make sure that I had the crew and the EP and everyone else to help bring my vision to life. And make sure that it looked great because that’s the first thing you’re going to see, you’re going to see how it looks, what kind of camera did we use, the color; you know what I’m saying? I didn’t want it to look janky! So for Surviving, even though we did the Indie Go-Go campaign we had to take a huge chunk out of our savings.”

About Brandon Robinson

Brandon 'Scoop B' Robinson is a managing editor and columnist at RESPECT Magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @ScoopB and Instagram: @Scoop_B.
As a 12 year old, he was a Nets reporter from 1997-1999, co-hosting a show called Nets Slammin' Planet with former New Jersey Net Albert King and Nets play-by-play man Chris Carrino. He's also been a writer and radio host at CBS and a staff writer at The Source Magazine.
He's a graduate of both Eastern University and Hofstra University.
You can catch him daily on the Scoop B Radio Podcast. Visit ScoopBRadio.com to listen.
For inquiries and to contact Brandon 'Scoop B' Robinson visit ScoopB.com
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